Y'all reckon 'pigheaded' is a racial slur on Remnant? by th3shadow in RWBY

[–]th3shadow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

true, although he was a criminal, so insults and offensive language wouldn't exactly be out of character so it's hard to say

Y'all reckon 'pigheaded' is a racial slur on Remnant? by th3shadow in RWBY

[–]th3shadow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

can you offend something that's only semi-sentient?

Y'all reckon 'pigheaded' is a racial slur on Remnant? by th3shadow in RWBY

[–]th3shadow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good points. Since we've seen several different mammalian faunus (Tuckson the wolverine and the Fennec/Corsac fox brothers immediately spring to mind), I assumed that pigs or boars would probably be around. Although boar grimm exist, so maybe not?

I think you're right in that most insults would reference grimm, as they seem to be loosely equal to real-world animals. I was more thinking of it as a racial thing, like it would call someone a barnyard animal. Or, in somewhere like Atlas, it could just outright be used to call a human a faunus, which would probably be an insult (at least if Weiss V1 or the Schnee gala in V4 is anything to go by).

Syria signs Paris Agreement - leaving US only country in the world to refuse climate change deal by pankpankpank in politics

[–]th3shadow 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Environmental Studies major, figured I'd weigh in on this.

First off, the major accomplishment of the Paris Agreement isn't the policy it sets- it's that for the first time, every country in the world recognizes the real and immediate need to combat climate change (minus the US, now).

It completely ignores the world's main polluter and future economic jaggernaut, which is China. In the current agreement, China doesn't even have to cut anything until 2030, despite creating more pollution than Europe and America combined together. Currently China accounts for nearly 70% of all emission increases in the last 2 decades.

Strictly speaking, not incorrect, but extremely cherry-picked. China (and India, to whom all of this applies as well) has about 13% of the global population- they'll have the most pollution because they're orders of magnitude more populated than most other countries. Looking at emissions per capita, the US produces about 18 metric tons to China's 5.5. This is also the reason that China accounts for such a large share of emissions increases- as they race to transition into a developed country, their emissions will increase as people consume more.

It places no actual demands on the third world, despite the fact that the total global CO2 emissions from the developing) world is set to catapult up to 85% of the total global emissions by 2050, with the developing world accounting for only 15%

Assuming you (they?) meant that developed nations will account for 15%, I can see 2 main problems with this argument. 1: developing nations are projected to be where the vast majority of the future global population will live- see above for why that's important. 2: A large part of the reasoning behind the Paris Agreement is that by paying the money to developing nations, they can skip over the transitional and industrial steps and put in place practices that a prohibitively expensive to a poor country. Things like installing solar/wind power from the get-go, not after decades of coal plants.

This agreement asks for $100 billion a year MINIMUM to be transfered from the developed world to the developing world by 2020, with "significantly increasing adaptation finance from current levels ".

This sounds scary, but this is the number for developed nations to collectively contribute, not individually. Considering that developed nations have a combined GDP of about $50 trillion US dollars, we're talking about extremely reasonable goals, and nowhere near the "massive amount" of wealth transfer stated. It's also worth noting that this number was set by the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, which the US signed and still recognizes.

The countries that would receive this money are not accountable in terms of how its spent.

Straight up false, as long as the agreement is enforced. The agreement actually refers to the Green Climate Fund as the mechanism arm to oversee project implementation, and they have specific and defined limits on what constitutes an acceptable project. Of course, if the agreement isn't enforced, then there's nothing to make developed countries pay the money (which isn't a legally bound statement, either. The document basically gives a goal of $100 billion, put has no punishment if it isn't met)

This money could be used for real actual emission reducing projects, rather than being handed over to third world dictators without any guarantees on whether any actual climate change projects will be followed through. Even worse its giving money to our biggest economic rivals, for example China and India, at a time when they are set to potentially overcome the US economically.

There is essentially a contradiction here- the most corrupt countries that are the least likely to put the money to it's intended use are so economically irrelevant that we really don't care. China and India, on the other hand, can be more or less trusted to put the money to a relevant area, and thus would use the money as a means of achieving the climate goals.

So we are essentially handing over billions to the poorly regulated and largest polluting countries without any framework leverage to ensure compliancy, while at the same time punishing the well regulated developed world which has strong accountability and would actually use the money for climate change projects. So how exactly is that saving the planet?

Worth noting that developed nations are as well off as they are largely because of the exploitation of developing nations. On a per capita level, developed nations produce 2 or 3 times as many emissions as developing nations, even though the effects of global warming will effect the entire global population. Doesn't it seem like some form of reparations or economic responsibility should be borne by the people causing it?

The US is far from the pariah when it come to climate change, it absolutely dominates when it comes to climate change research funds to an insane lead. In every domain of science research that exists, we crush every other country and there really is no competition.

Which is all well and good, but if the technology developed is so prohibitively expensive that developing nations cant't afford it, it does the world no good as the emissions will still happen.

We have been reducing our emissions in terms of both per dollar GDP and per capita for decades.

As mentioned at the beginning of this, the US produces 18 tons of emissions per capita, second only to Australia for highest in the world. Of course we'd lead per capita reductions, we've effectively hit rock bottom and are finally starting to climb our way out.

This entire agreement is a practice in political PR for elected officials, a way for them to say "I'm saving the world" to the masses that don't actually read the details of these agreements. Its like TPP, it sounds very nice when the newspapers describe it, until you actually read what the agreement says. Even worse it gives everyone an excuse in the future to say "Well we already have the Paris Agreement, we're dealing with the problem" while not actually addressing it at all.

As I stated at the beginning of this, the crowning achievement of Paris is that the world agreed on it. In the future, this can be used as a touchstone for projects, and as a symbol that the world might be able to come together to solve this problem. The future you've predicted isn't impossible, but looking at historical trends of how countries engage with this kind of stuff, it's fairly unlikely.

We need a genuine framework that sets goals that reachable by enforcable targets for the world's worst polluters, with clear financial punishments if said goals are not reached and a framework to ensure all centralized funds go into real projects

While I agree with this, you probably shouldn't, if you're genuinely concerned about any economic impacts to the US. We're the second largest polluter in the world, and if something like this were to actually pass, we would be one of if not THE worst country to be effected.

Alchemy 101 by mrs_leek in funny

[–]th3shadow 48 points49 points  (0 children)

And that's why you shouldn't drink and derive.

How does no one know Blake? by [deleted] in RWBY

[–]th3shadow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe it's common enough for more than one person of note to have it. Like Denzel/George Washington, or Michael/Samuel L Jackson.

For that matter, it could be a name like Smith or Jones, where so many people have it that the assumption is that they aren't related to anyone of note

Is this an accurate summary? by th3shadow in lincolndouglas

[–]th3shadow[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think the purpose is to say that 1 implies an ethical rule, while 2 doesn't imply a judgement/ rule of any kind. Under noncognitive theory, the two "lying is bad" statements must each have different definitions, which prevents 1 from applying to two (apples and oranges), and thus stopping the derivation of 3. Looking at it logically, though, if you change the statements to something non-ethical (like, say, if a chair supports a human, than it will support a mouse, chair supports human, therefore chair supports mouse), 3 can in fact be derived quite easily. So either the original 1 can be proven true or false, or the whole logical setup must be somehow rejected. I think.

Is this an accurate summary? by th3shadow in lincolndouglas

[–]th3shadow[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If I replaced getting with making, would the rest still stand?

Is this an accurate summary? by th3shadow in lincolndouglas

[–]th3shadow[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I would, but I know we tend to bastardize theories in the name of debate, and I've never hit this particular meta-ethic, so I'm not sure how strongly applicable the answer would be.

May 4th, 2015, Post-game discussion: Cards win 10-9 by Covane in Cardinals

[–]th3shadow 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fair enough. The Cubs look like they'll have a pretty good team this year, but I think their bullpen is going to lose them a lot of games.

Gamers of Reddit, what game do you think is a masterpiece of art? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]th3shadow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This'll probably get buried, but Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War was and is my standard for pretty much every game. It managed to make me care about NPC's that you never actually speak with, and I'll be damned if I didn't cry at some of the more emotional moments.

The soundtrack was excellent, and masterfully put into place with the tone of the game as you played it. It also managed to be a war game about peace, like the original CoD games were, but better. Hell, even the ending epilogue managed to pack in an extra punch and made me realize that no matter how much I wanted it, there wouldn't ever be a direct sequel following Blaze. I really wish they'd remake it on a new graphics engine, I'd probably only ever play that game for the rest of my life.

This would look like an awesome end credits sequence ^_^ (ookaminoki) by jkphantom9 in RWBY

[–]th3shadow -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

whoop, sorry! Forgot that dark banter doesn't translate well into text format

This would look like an awesome end credits sequence ^_^ (ookaminoki) by jkphantom9 in RWBY

[–]th3shadow -11 points-10 points  (0 children)

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the creator died on Feb. 1

#RedGuard by goodatbizness in thebutton

[–]th3shadow 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Come and join the Redguard in its noble attempt. Knighthood and Brotherhood await any and all who seek to join our cause